UFOs: The Wrong Psychological Aftermath

A sighting of an unusual object or light in the sky provokes, or should, an emotional/psychological reaction that is not too far outside the normal parameters of
reactive behavior to a strange event.

But a reaction should be distinctly different from normal reactive states.

And the aftermath of an alleged UFO abduction has to be characterized by behavior that doesn’t belie the inherent elements of a terrifying or totally bizarre episode.

However, UFO sightings or UFO abductions do not evoke reactions, generally, that bespeak a completely unique or affective set of circumstances; that is, sighters and abductees, after their observation or alleged abduction, do not demonstrate behavior that falls within what psychology defines for the aftermath of events like an abduction (UFO related or not) or the observation of something anomalistic.

Seeing something in the sky (or on the ground) that is totally foreign to one’s normal experiences and frames of reference can evoke euphoria (depending upon the mind-set of the observer) or questioning of one’s senses, or provoke an astute querying. Sometimes fear is prominent (again, depending upon the sighter’s mind-set).

An alleged UFO abduction is another matter altogether. Such an episode, which is akin to a criminal kidnapping, should result in psychological and/or social behavior, after the fact, that mimics what is commonly referred to, currently, as post-traumatic stress disorder or post-traumatic stress syndrome.

But I know of no abduction account that provides a litany of behavior that duplicates or even approximates the post-traumatic stress etiologies.

One can find the kind of after-behavior that is missing in UFO encounters in the 9/11 event(s).

A UFO sighting is nearly, in this day and age, a prosaic event for most people; humans on this planet have seen or read about stranger things than an odd light in the night sky or a weird aircraft.

Nonetheless, the observation of either should provoke a response that is something more than ho-hum. Generally, it doesn’t, which tells me that people have become inured to UFO sightings.

Abduction accounts, not so much.

Those professing that they were taken by alien entities -- extraterrestrial or otherworldly beings – end up, afterwards, talking about their experience as if it were just an unusual occurrence during their daily routines.

Under hypnosis, recollection of their alleged sojourn often invites behavior, while “asleep,” that appears to suggest a terrible or horrifying experience.

Hypnosis, long denied as a viable mechanism for finding information from the unconscious (even among psychoanalytics), presents a number of problems which strike at the heart of the material(s) recalled by the person hypnotized; i.e., confluence and juxtaposition of things read, seen, heard, over the life-time of the hypnotic, such as Sci-FI films or stories or radio and television shows in which persons are kidnapped, by humans or alien beings.

In one of my high-school’s assemblies, during the 1950s, an hypnotist mentioned to some students he had onstage, as part of his act, while they were “under,” that they were seeing a flying saucer. Panic ensued, the students getting up from their chairs, and running, helter-skelter around and off the stage. It was a moment of seer pandemonium, which took a while to be quelled. That was a reaction to flying saucers at the outset of the modern era of sightings, and is what one should have expected then, and somewhat now.

That aside, persons who’ve seen a UFO and those who have supposedly been taken against their will by entities of a anomalistic kind, generally resume their day-to-day existence, while some go so far as to try an exploit their experience, without any hint of the vicissitudes that would normally occur after such a traumatic event as that of a kidnapping, especially one involving the particulars included in the retellings, under hypnosis or not, that are proffered.

A UFO sightings should provide a “wow factor” for the sighter. It doesn’t any more.

An abduction experience should cause the abductee to suffer a smattering of traumatic symptoms, lasting long after their alleged experience. That doesn’t happen.

This lack of psychological repercussions is what did in the so-called contactees; none showed indications of trauma – rather they displayed psychopathic delusions that were not related to their alleged contact by beings from other worlds.

Abductees today, resume their lives, as if nothing untoward or totally bizarre afflicted them.

Yes, something happened to some who recount abduction experiences, but if what they say they experienced is true, their after-behavior belies that experience. The human mind can’t repress, forever, an event as traumatizing as that of an alien abduction, as it is remembered by the abductee.

In the psychological or even the psychoanalytic literature, where sexual elements are stressed, one can find the raft of symptoms that a UFO sighter or a UFO abductee should display after their encounter.

That few show such symptoms puts a question mark over their accounts.

(And this lack of a psychological aftermath is what mars such UFO events as Roswell, where for thirty years, the alleged crash of a flying disk lay dormant, until resurrected by ufologists with a penchant for infusing apparent witnesses to the Roswell episode with details and remembrances that were not based in actual circumstances. But that for another time….)

RR

Rex Heflin's inspiration for his UFO photos?

Paul Villa was an alleged flying saucer contactee, living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who provided a slew of crisp (faked) UFO photos in the 1960s:







These two photos were taken in 1963/64 by Mr. Villa, a mechanic.





Did Rex Heflin see these photos and tried to duplicate them in 1965?





RR

UFOs: Why Science Isn't Interested

Scientific methodology is thwarted when it comes to the UFO phenomenon.

What can science study when it comes to UFOs?

There is nothing tangible for scientists to study. There is no evidence that can be tested or any behavior that can be replicated or pinned down in any way.

Photos of aircraft or even of evanescent phenomena (lightning for instance) can be examined, but UFO photos offer nothing specific for science to look at.

The photos of Adamski, Villa, and Billy Meier, to name a few, would offer elements for science or intelligence agencies to scrutinize, if they were authentic photos.







Photos, less detailed, and maybe real, of amorphous UFOs don’t offer worthy elements that can be studied either. Does no one take a telephoto picture of a UFO? Where are the professional snapshots?

As for trace elements in supposed UFO landings (Socorro) or debris elements (Roswell), those are so indefinite or imaginary that science really has nothing to examine. (Anthony Bragalia has discovered that Battelle has studied malleable metal, allegedly from the Roswell incident, but Bragalia’s findings are beclouded by Battelle’s “secrecy” in what they’re doing or have done.)

Scientists need specimens to study, or hypotheses based upon observation(s). Witness testimony, regardless of the support of such by some UFO buffs, is useless, for scientific purposes. Sure, a credible witness might provide a clue that helps a scientist see an avenue for study, but witness testimony, all by itself, is generally useless.

UFO sightings nowadays are even more transitory that flying saucer reports of the past, those that supposedly left indentations (Socorro again) or radiation traces (the Desvergers, Florida tale), so science is even less inclined to get involved with sightings.



Some UFO mavens keep indicating that the O’Hare sighting of a few years back is a prominent UFO sighting, but others (Lance Moody for one) ask for something tangible: where are the photos? After all, almost everyone has a camera-enabled cell phone, and so many persons relate that they saw something strange over the Chicago airport, one wonders (along with Mr. Moody) why none of them had the presence of mind to snap a photo of the alleged O’Hare UFO?

Scientists might have trouble with a photo, as noted, but at least they’d have something to scrutinize. (Of course, some UFO hobbyists insist upon the negatives or original photos for study but today’s photos are captured electronically, so there are no negatives to offer. That argument, from UFO tyros, even when applied to older photos, is just stupid, non-scientific.)

The point here, by me, is that science has nothing with which to grapple when it comes to UFOs. The phenomenon is primarily witness-induced today, or hoaxed, just as it was in the past. However, those past UFO or flying saucer incidents had a few ingredients (radar blips, movie-film captures, trace elements) that today’s sightings do not have.

Moreover, the topic is so tainted by the goofiness and circus-like atmosphere, even by those who once had some credibility and cachet when it came to UFOs, that science won’t touch the phenomenon at all, often acknowledging it as not a legitimate area for scientific scrutiny.

So, science is out. And ufology is a sham. That leaves us with what? A curiosity that is not going to be explained or understood as it stands right now.

To pursue the matter further takes a mind and/or personality that is in a state of denial about reality, and what is purposeful for life.

RR

UFOs are Mega-tachyons

Kevin Randle's blog is riffing on the loss of "robust UFO sightings" that we and others have mentioned recently.

Click HERE for a paper that provides a clue as to where "robust UFOs" have gone.

RR

Stanton Friedman needs pocket change?

This letter to Beyond Reality magazine [March/April 1978, Page 6] from Stanton Friedman indicates, to me, that one of the purposes of Mr. Friedman’s immersion in the UFO mystery was and is to accrue some money, not riches perhaps, but monies with which to subsist.

Retired from his profession – a profession that seems to have ended early for him; we’re not sure why, retirement or ?? – Mr. Friedman has tried to gather or recoup costs for his UFO adventures.

For me, trying to obtain money from an obtuse hobby, any obtuse hobby, is unseemly and detracts from the credibility of one who honestly pursues an interest, above or beyond one’s main source of livelihood.

If UFOs, for instance, are a nagging source of curiosity, scientific, ufologically, or any other kind of curiosity, one can try to capitalize upon that curiosity, but to do so invites mercantile motivations that make questionable one’s interest in the matter.

A number of “ufologists” have tried to make a living from UFOs – Jerome Clark, Brad Steiger, Kevin Randle, Mr. Friedman, and many more. Some have been successful (Steiger), while others have struggled to even break even; that is, they haven’t even gotten back the monies spent on travel (to conventions and UFO event sightings) or the expenses of running web-sites and blogs, as niggardly as those expenses are.

One can’t condemn a person for trying to make a living, or from trying to get back monies they’ve spent on their obsession. But one can question one’s motivations when asking for money becomes the sine qua non of their initial curiosity.

Mr. Friedman may have needed the few dollars he solicited in his Beyond Reality offering, way back in 1978. And he may need the few dollars he gets from his writings today or from his sojourns at conventions or from TV appearances.

I don’t begrudge him the little bit of money he is able to gather. But I do wonder what lies at the heart of his UFO pursuit – an explanation of the phenomenon, or the need to keep his head above the waters of everyday living.

RR

The La Madera Sighting (and Socorro)

Jose Antonio Caravaca has been kind enough to provide us his "exegesis" of the La Madera, New Mexico sighting that took place shortly after the Lonnie Zamora/Socorro sighting (of 1964).

The La Madera sighting is important, in the context of whatever interpretation or hypothesis one might have about what Officer Zamora really saw/experienced.

Click HERE for Senor Caravaca's offering.

UFOs: The Science Fiction Effect

Copyright 2011, InterAmerica, Inc.

While perusing The Science Fiction Encyclopedia (Illustrated) edited by Peter Nicholls [Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY, 1979] I was struck by how many SciFi images matched or were similar to what some notorious UFO sightings proclaimed.

More importantly, the images all antedate the sightings that have become folkloric in the UFO canon.

Witnesses of the airship phenomenon of the late 1890s and early 1900s might have been influenced by illustrations for various publications such as these:





Maybe George Adamski got the idea for his allegedly concocted flying saucer and photographs of same from something like this:



Betty Hill was remembering her contact from magazines and images like this:




Detail from clipping (above)

And Barney Hill’s recollection of what he saw came from this magazine, spotted on a newsstand perhaps:



Or maybe it was one (or both) of these clips:





(One might even posit that Reverend Gill’s sighting in New Guinea was predicated on a remembered picture he once saw, particularly like the first of the three above.)

And have those who’ve seen little men next to or inside craft gotten their "sighting" from a classic Superman segment airing on TV in 1951?



Those who’ve described flying saucers and UFOs must surely have been influenced by clips such as these or movies of the 1950s which emulated the “saucer” seen here:



And persons halted by entities shooting them with a ray gun could assuredly been interposing, by culling from their memory, such images as this:



And abductees got some of their ideas from portrayals such as this one:



Recently, UFO spotters have been indicating they’ve seen triangular craft in the skies above them, such as this:



Now either UFO witnesses are regurgitating images purloined from their memory, or UFOs and flying saucers have adopted the constructs imagined by SciFi writers and editors.

Which is it I ask?

RR

Howard Hughes: Socorro (and Roswell?)

Howard Hughes’ Tool Company and Hughes Aircraft were employed by the U.S. military to devise various space craft and satellite equipment, including lunar landing modules in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s.

Both Hughes’ constructs were CIA connected and some Hughes’ operations were CIA fronts: Maheu & Associates were a CIA front in the Hughes empire. (See Age of Secrets: The Conspiracy that Toppled Richard Nixon and the Hidden Death of Howard Hughes by Gerald Bellett, 1995.)

Hughes and Raven Industries (a CIA front) worked on LEMs and tested them in the southwestern deserts of The United States in the 1960s (footnoted at the RRRGroup blog)

Howard Hughes also worked with Soviet agencies and engineering counterparts, with CIA approval, to acquire technical information about the Russian advances in space materials, especially lunar landers.

Here are three prototypical drawings of what Hughes Aircraft/Toolco derived from those internecine contacts with the Soviets.







(Note the similarity to the Socorro craft – image 1 and 2 -- spotted by Lonnie Zamora in Socorro, 1964, and the propulsive thrusters in image 3; Zamora’s rocket blast!)

Howard Hughes was for atomic disarmament, and struggled with the AEC to thwart atomic explosions in the Nevada desert in the 1950s. He was generally rebuffed. (Ibid, Age of Secrets)

Hughes also was enamored of pychics and connected with Peter Hurkos on various occasions, ostensibly about the insinuations of George Adamski, who imparted dire warnings that supposedly came from Venusian visitors about atomic testings. (Ibid, Age of Secrets et al.)

(We have also stumbled across indications of a secret Hughes Aircraft test for the Navy in 1947 that might account for the Roswell incident and debris. More on this upcoming.)

Hughes’ operations were also employed by the United States Navy. Late 1969: the CIA wanted to use the Hughes Tool Company as a front to build a high-tech "The Hughes Glomar Explorer" vessel to salvage sunken submarines. "The Jennifer Project" was to retrieve a sunken Soviet sub 750 miles northwest of Hawaii…but Hughes pulled out of the plan. (Ibid, Age of Secrets)

That UFO buffs and investigators have overlooked the Hughes connection to U.S. military testings of prototypical space vehicles, one of which we contend is what Lonnie Zamora saw in Socorro in April 1964, goes to the heart of the lacunae in “ufological” research, especially when such research tends to reference prosaic explanations for some esoteric UFO incidents, Roswell, Socorro, Shag Harbor among them.

RRR/JS/RR

Adamski's Flying Saucer and Heflin's UFO

The November/December 1976 Beyond Reality (Special UFO Report) magazine had a Guest Editorial by Brad Steiger (on Page 4), in which another “identification” for George Adamski’s iconic flying saucer is provided:



To read the Editorial clearly, which says Adamski’s flying saucer photo was of a bottle cooler lid, click HERE.

The other “identifications” include a chicken brooder, a humidor, and a Christmas ornament.

How or why, then, did some UFO spotters see UFOs that look like Adamski’s flying saucer:


Drawing by Spanish witness, 1977 [Beyond Reality UFO Update, Fall 1978, Page 13]


Muhammed Ali’s drawing of what he saw in 1972 [Beyond Reality, March/April 1978, Page 34]

And the same thing happened with Rex Heflin’s alleged UFO:



Warren Martin drew a craft that he and four friends saw:


Beyond Reality UFO Update [Ibid, Page 34]

Both Adamski’s photos of flying saucers and Heflin’s photos of a UFO are said to be fakes, Heflin’s photos less so than Adamski’s arguably.

Nonetheless, if such photos are, indeed, fakes, why do some credible UFO sighters see or draw objects (or craft, if you will) “things” that smack of faked UFO photos?

RR

The U.S. Air Force: Adamski/Heflin photos are fake!

Ray Palmer’s Flying Saucers magazine [February 1969, Issue 62] has some interesting copies of correspondence tied to Palmer’s “editorial” about William D. Clendenon’s attempt to interest the Air Force and Hughes Aircraft in his flying saucer prototype, which he, Clendenon, hoped to patent also.

Those thrusts by Clendenon led to missives from the Air Force to members of The United States Congress, in which Adamski’s (in)famous flying saucer photograph is mentioned along with the photographs of Rex Heflin.

Click HERE to see the Adamski reference.

And click HERE to see the Adamski and Heflin references. (Another click HERE provides the signatory of this letter.)

Also, as I implicate Hughes Aircraft in the Zamora/Socorro sighting of 1964, I’m including two missives from Palmer’s publication [Ibid] that indicate Hughes Aircraft was not immune from the flying saucer phenomenon, in practical, constructive ways:

HUGHES-1

HUGHES-2

(Note that, in the Heflin letter to Congressman Meeds, the Air Force writes that it never had possession of Adamski’s photograph nor Rex Heflin’s, which may be disputative to some Heflin supporters.)

RR

How the Trent/McMinnville photos were created?

This photo from The NEW Report on Flying Saucers magazine [True/Fawcett, NY, 1967] appears on Page 27 in a Lloyd Mallan article entitled “There’s More (and less) to Saucers than Meets the Eye.”

The saucer depicted consists of two paper plates glued together by Gary Buboltz, hung on a clothesline with a thin thread and photographed from fifteen (15) feet.

The photo may be found in the Project Blue Book files.


Here is the uncropped photo:


Ibid: Back Cover

It shows, as Mr. Mallan points out, how easy it is or was to fake flying saucer photos.

J. Allen Hynek authenticated this photo from 1967:



The saucer shown was a balsa-wood model, created and filmed by the Jaroslaw brothers of Michigan who hung it, by a thread, from a tree at the edge of Lake St. Clair:


Ibid: Page 31

The idea that the Trents may have strung a truck mirror from overhead wires rankles even me. The iconic photos have their supporters and defenders, such as Bruce Maccabee, and also their critics, such as Robert Sheaffer and deceased skeptic Phil Klass.

What allows me to accept the possibility [sic] of a Trent hoax is the time factors involved in the episode: the sighting by Mrs. Trent, the calling of her husband, his trip inside the house to get their camera, and the time to take two shots before the object departed.

Moreover, the object doesn’t move far enough in the sky if Bruce Maccabee’s estimate of the time between photo one and photo two taken by Mr. Trent is correct: 31 seconds.

(See a previous post here for copies of the Trent photos.)

Photos can offer proof or disproof of UFOs, as the Mallan article delineates, among other critiques of UFO photography; the advent of computer programs that can create or manipulate images exacerbates the problem of hoaxed UFO photos.

The Buboltz photo, above, emulates the Trent photos. Does it remove the “authentic” rubric given to the Trent pictures? You decide.

RR

Egregious actions and blunders?

UFO Report magazine [August 1976] had an interview with J. Allen Hynek by Timothy Green Beckley [Page 18 ff]. This clip is from Page 20:



Hynek’s “marsh gas” or “swamp gas” explanation was for the Ann Arbor/Dexter/Hillsdale sightings in March of 1966, not April 1967.

This kind of inattention to detail is what has undermined Hynek by any serious UFO investigator or maven.

Adrian Vance provided an article for that same UFO Report magazine [August 1976, Page 36 ff]: Vanishing UFOs: A Dimensional Dilemma.

In Vance’s piece he related that Edward U Condon destroyed all the Colorado Projects UFO materials right before his death.



And in a following paragraph, Mr. Vance tells how Hynek mislaid some UFO photos and negatives that he (Hynek) took of a UFO himself.



Click HERE to see that portion of Mr. Vance’s article.

Can anyone substantiate the Condon and/or Hynek actions?

If either actually happened, it represents behavior that is egregiously unscientific and sickening, as Mr. Vance indicates.

Condon was a security risk, who should not have had access to any materials from the Air Force or any other government agency. We went after Condon’s security status right before he was handed the Colorado Project and you can read about our efforts here in a very early posting – the second one in the archive:

Condon's Security Woes

Hynek was just scatter-brained.

Is this any way to do science?

Is this why the UFO phenomenon is a joke?

Are UFO hobbyists investing their productive lives in a topic that is so befouled by past and present stupidities that they (the hobbyists) can be maligned for wasting their lives?

I ask you…

RR